


Mastering the Art of Mitch Cooking

by gravityinglass



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, character study of a character's relationship with food and people, eight drabbles essentially
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 05:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: 7 meals someone taught Mitch to cook, and one he taught Auston.





	Mastering the Art of Mitch Cooking

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a bastardization of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is still on my Christmas list for the fourth year in a row, Mom. The idea comes from a BA article that I can no longer find about how everyone should have a house meal, a simple thing they go to and cook over and over. This is something my mom taught me, but she took it to a little higher level: I can do exactly six house meals, one for each day of the week. The seventh day is for leftovers.
> 
> These are essentially eight drabbles about Mitch Marner’s relationship with people and with food. They’re not connected except by timeline. Advance as you so choose.
> 
> If you found this work by google searching your name or the name of someone you know, I'd recommend a strategic retreat. I can't stop you, but I also can't make you unknow the things you will know after reading this.

 

  1. [**Beef Bourguignon**](https://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/julia-childs-beef-bourguignon/cdda3ccc-3623-4363-8095-aaca1a3f8313) **(Mom Marner)**



_“A house meal must be adaptable as a chameleon, made of basic ingredients, fast, culinarily undemanding, and seem neither a sin nor a charity to consume.” -Tamar Adler_

Mitch wasn’t a great cook, but he was dogged at it. Before he left home, his mom had taught him a week’s worth of basic meals, altered to fit the dietary needs of an athlete. By that time, Chris wasn’t playing as seriously but they still ate the way they had when he needed calories to play hockey at the high school; now, he was eighteen and leaving for university. Mitch was fourteen and eyeing the CHL, so Mom had sat them down in the kitchen.

“You don’t have to be good cooks, but you should know how to feed yourselves,” she said, and gave them packs of notecards and little boxes to store them in. As she taught them the various recipes, Mitch wrote them down in a way he could understand later, with his own little tweaks and notes.

Chris had taken those basics and stuck to them; if Mitch ever visited Chris on a Tuesday, he could be reliably certain there would be cassoulet on the table that evening. It wasn’t always the exact cassoulet Mom had taught them, but it was always a bean-and-pork dish, slow cooked in the oven.

Mitch’s grandmother had been a Julia Child devotee, so most of the foods Mitch’s mom had grown up with had been French-based. In turn, the recipes Mom passed on to Mitch had those classic flavors and style to them.

Mitch’s favorite thing to make with his mom was beef bourguignon; it was Mom’s Friday dish, something she’d start at noon and they’d eat seven hours later, with the house brimming with the smell of beef and onion.

She taught him one of the late summers he was home, an early fall day that was finally cool enough for them to have the oven on for hours. She settled herself into the kitchen counter with the bills she had to pay for the month; Mitch followed and pulled out the ingredients she told him to.

“Start with cutting the bacon into half-centimeter cubes,” she said, and dug her checkbook out from her purse.

Their dogs circled around the kitchen, hoping for snacks. Mitch snapped his fingers and pointed at their beds in the corner. They went, still staring at him beseechingly.

“Do you want talk radio or music?” she asked as he started a pot of water to simmer.

“Music,” he said. “Unless you’re going to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Again, in which case literally anything else.”

She sighed. “I don’t know where I went wrong with you. Classical was all I listened to when I was pregnant. I thought I’d produce a super-smart baby.”

“Instead you got a super athlete,” he teased. He retrieved the red meat cutting board and started on the bacon.  “And I don’t mind classical. But you always play Vivaldi.”

She raised an eyebrow at him before putting on a Top 40 station on the radio.  She talked him through the rest of the prep, through to the first few hours in the oven. In between dices and stirring and first sears, she asked him about school and Mitch replied.

Mitch started on the dishes as she hummed along to the radio. This was a peace he didn’t often get, the scratch of Mom’s pen, the tick of the timer, the rush of water from the faucet.

He sat with her once he was done, helping her balance the checkbook. He felt bad about how much they spent on his hockey, but Mom always petted at his hair and told him not to worry so much.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“What would you say if I told you I liked both boys and girls?”

Mom kept writing. “I’d say you know yourself better than anyone else, and it gives you twice the world’s population with which to find happiness.”

Mitch leaned his head on his mom’s shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course, Mouse,” she said, then: “did you set the timer right?”

“I think so.”

 

 

  1. [**Lentils and Rice with Pork**](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013733-lentils-and-rice-with-or-without-pork) **(Billet Mom)**



_“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him...the people who give you their food give you their heart.” -Cesar Chavez_

His billet mom in London didn’t cook the way his mom did, but Mitch hadn’t been expecting that. London was two hours driving from Toronto, so his parents attended every game they could, but he still had to live in London and attend school there. The change of food took some getting used to, especially once the [team physiotherapist got involved](https://insideohl.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/ohl-rookies-how-london-knight-mitch-marner-is-handling-his-first-season/).

Both of his billet parents were doctors, and had three teenage kids of their own. Mitch shared a room with their oldest son, but the upshot was that the adults were always busy or on call, and the kids were always eating massive quantities of whatever they could make in bulk.

His billet mom worked at the London hospital, so when she was home it was for long stretches; when she was gone, it was for longer stretches. Usually his billet dad did the cooking, but Mitch loved his billet mom’s lentils and rice most of all.

She’d use a massive pot on the stove, cook two kilos of lentils with bay leaf and salt, and serve it with rice and pork sausage. It was something the four kids in the house devoured by the bowlful.

It was a Tuesday when Mitch was home sick and his billet mom was home. He still wasn’t comfortable calling her Susan, but Dr. Perraglia felt too formal. He mostly coped by avoiding her name if he could avoid it.

He had a tension headache related to school and exams on top of hockey--and fucking Dylan Strome beating him in points, what the _hell_ \--and he’d cashed in a mental health day, one of the things he vastly appreciated about the Perraglia family.

Susan had her pager on, but she was also doing household work, reminding him to get his laundry from the wash and take another round of paracetamol when his head was still throbbing four hours after onset. She was in the middle of making a pot of lentils for dinner when her pager went off, so she sat Mitch down on the couch with a tomato-shaped timer, an icepack, and a short list of instructions to finish the lentils for when the others got home.

Mitch stayed in the kitchen after Susan left, washing rice and setting the table. The others weren’t going to be home for awhile yet, but it was nice, rhythmic. He turned the burner off when the timer rang, and then started the rice cooker.

Bill got home with a carful of Mitch’s billet brothers--Jamie, a year older than Mitch, and then Ezra and Ethan, the twins a year younger--and took over cooking sausage and onions to serve over the lentils.

Jamie hated cooking more than just about anything else, so he disappeared up the stairs. Ezra and Ethan were bickering with each other in the living room until Bill shouted at them to start their homework.

Dinner was raucous, as it generally was with four teenage boys fighting for seconds and thirds. Susan returned after the twins finished with dishes and homework had been spread across the kitchen table with Bill circling and issuing help as needed. Bill had made her up a plate and left it in the microwave; Mitch crossed the kitchen to get himself a glass of water while Susan heated her plate.

“Thanks for your help earlier, Mitchell,” she said, carrying the bowl to the table with a hot mitt. “It all went okay?”

“No one complained,” Mitch replied. “Want me to sit with you?”

“I won’t say no to the company, though I don’t see that being a problem with the rest of the boys down here.”

Mitch shrugged and settled in, but not before making himself another bowl of lentils and rice.

“Still hungry?” Susan asked.

Mitch looked down at his bowl, and then up at her, and she just laughed.

 

 

  1. [**Chili and Cinnamon Rolls**](https://www.twiniversity.com/2017/02/chili-and-cinnamon-rolls-recipe/) **(Jake Gardiner)**



_“The kitchen is the heart of the house.” -Alvaro Enrique_

At rookie camp, Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly collected everyone for a dinner at their house. Jake had been with the Leafs for two seasons at that point; Mo was with the Marlies, but they were all certain he’d be up with the Leafs in no time.

There were six draftees in Mitch’s class, plus a handful of Marlies and CHL boys who’d been sent down the previous year. All told, it came out to about twenty people wandering through the Gardiner’s kitchen, bumping into Lucy and Jake bickering over a truly enormous pot on the stove. Like, Mitch was mostly certain he could crawl inside and pull the lid on over himself, big pot.

Most of the guys went out to the yard to play catch and wrestle with Jake’s dogs, but Mitch stuck in the kitchen with Jake.

“You mind opening cans?” Jake asked, pointing to a pyramid of cans on his kitchen table. “Gotta get all of those open. Tomatoes first.”

Mitch looked at the literal dozens of cans. “Are you planning on feeding an army?”

“Twenty-three professional athletes, and my girlfriend, who runs marathons for fun and eats accordingly. So, close enough.”

Mitch grinned. “You think we could take over town hall? Arm ‘em with skate blades taped to hockey sticks?”

“If you told them food was in there, probably.” Jake rummaged in a drawer and handed Mitch a can opener. “Thanks, man.”

Mitch started opening cans while Jake started browning onions with chili peppers. “Is training camp always like this?”

“Rookie camp is always hard,” Jake said. “One of the As did this for me when I started out with the Ducks, and then the Leafs had it too. It’s just nice to know people. Not a lot of rookies come straight up, so it’s nice to make them feel welcome when they might get rejected soon.”

“They’ll probably want to cook you a little til you’re more done,” Mo said, breezing through the kitchen. “Ooh, is that--”

“If you touch the cinnamon rolls before we eat I will chop off your fingers and serve them to you,” Jake said flatly. “Mitts out of my food. Get out of my kitchen.”

“You let Mitch in here!”

“Mitch is being helpful, not a thief.” Jake pointed his wooden spoon at Mo. “Out, out, ye damned spot. Corral the other rookies.”

“Cinnamon rolls?” Mitch asked.

Jake flushed. “It’s a comfort food thing I grew up with. Chili and cinnamon rolls. It’s a midwestern US thing.”

“Yeah?”

Jake wrote out the recipe for the chili and cinnamon rolls on a 3x5 index card and passed it over to Mitch.

“You’re welcome here whenever,” Jake said, carefully unserious. “If you can put up with Mo lurking on my couch, all the damn time.’

“Love you too,” Mo shouted. “If you try to give away my room to another rookie, though, I’ll track and them down.”

Jake rolled his eyes, then shared a conspiratorial grin with Mitch, who couldn’t help but laugh.

It smarted a little when he was sent back down to the London Knights, but Jake kept texting him, as did Mo, so that made him feel like there could be a place there for him someday.

 

  1. **Lenten Pancakes (Dylan Strome)**



_“Laughter is brightest in the place where food is.” -Irish Proverb_

With the amount that they travelled and played, it was sometimes easy to forget that people were more religious than Mitch himself. To be fair, that was pretty easy. He’d only been into a real church maybe twice in his life: when his cousin got married, and for his distant great-grand-something-or-other’s funeral.

So, he was really fucking confused when Dylan Strome showed up at his house.

“What are you doing here?”

Dylan pushed past Mitch and into his kitchen. “Pancake Tuesday, bitch.”

Mitch stared at the door and then at the kitchen and then at Dylan again. “How did you get into my _house_?”

“Texted McDavo, honestly, who got in contact with Dvo, and he got me your address. Hey, you have eggs and shit, right?”

“You’re gonna need to explain to me what you’re doing here.”

“It’s Shrove Tuesday, and we’re stuffing our faces with pancakes. Am I observing Lent this year? Nope. But fuck if I’m missing Pancake Tuesday.”

“Someday the words that come out of your mouth are going to make sense, and I don’t know who’s going to be more confused by that: me, or you.”

“Brinksy is coming too,” Dylan continued, as if Mitch hadn’t spoke. He started rummaging around in the fridge. “Okay, I’m texting him and making him get whole milk. You drink soy milk? Seriously?”

“It’s Susan’s!” Mitch defended. “You know, my billet mom? Who doesn’t know I’m having friends over? Because it’s a game night?”

“Fuck that, it’s Pancake Tuesday.” Dylan spun around, grabbed Mitch’s shoulders and stared him dead in the eyes. “I don’t eat pancakes any day of the year except Pancake Tuesday, and you are going to make them with me, because I am two hours from my parents and my brother and I am going to eat pancakes in your kitchen with way too much syrup and jam. Are you with me?”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Dylan dropped his hands from Mitch’s shoulders. “Great! Where do you keep the flour and sugar?”

DeBrincat showed up about half an hour later with a plastic Loblaws bag, which meant it had definitely been an impromptu grocery trip. He dumped a carton of whole milk (“I could only find bags in three packs, and that’s a lot of milk,” DeBrincat explained cheerfully), a packet of powdered sugar, and four kinds of syrup onto the table. There was also an inexplicably tiny jar of Nutella.

Dylan had spent ten minutes cracking eggs into a bowl and inspecting them for shells. When he got a double yolk, he _lost his mind._ Mitch had sat on the counter and watched in fascinated horror.

The process of Dylan making pancakes was--something else. He smacked anyone who got too close with whatever cooking implement was closest to hand. He’d managed to find three separate frying pans, and was cooking as many pancakes as he could manage at a time, from the biggest bowl in Mitch’s billet family’s kitchen.

Dylan bounced across the kitchen--literally, there was no better word for his movements--and dumped a stack of pancakes onto Mitch’s plate.

Mitch looked at DeBrincat, who just grinned and slathered his own pancakes with jam.

Mitch decided that discretion was the better part of valor here and stole Dylan’s tiny jar of nutella for his first pancake.

 

  1. [**Artsoppa**](https://www.thespruce.com/dried-pea-soup-artsoppa-in-swedish-2952931) **and**[ **Knackebrod**](http://www.swedishfood.com/swedish-food-bread-recipes/301-rye-crispbread) **(Willy Nylander)**



_“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”  – Luciano Pavarotti_

Mitch had played with a lot of people over the years, gotten in close quarters with all kinds of men. With a team who spent long stretches of time together, you got to know people in their ups and downs, what they were like when they were tired, happy, drunk, sick, hurting, overjoyed.

With years with the Knights under his belt, a friendship with the world’s bitchiest Otter Dylan Strome, and his time with the Leafs and the adjacent Marlies, Mitch could say with serious authority that William Nylander was a fucking _nightmare_ when he was sick.

Luckily, Mitch had Kappy’s cell number, and Kappy had Mamma Nylander’s number and also a key to Willy’s apartment. Kappy himself had taken refuge at Jake Gardiner’s house, hiding from Willy’s tyrannical reign of tissues and terror over the delivery people who brought him food.

So Mitch took the key and breezed into Willy’s apartment with his shopping bags full of peas and flour and things.

In his phone call with Mrs Nylander--who was based out of Mississauga currently, apparently, where Willy’s dad was coaching for the Steelheads, so small world--she’d given him very detailed instructions on how to start the pea soup Willy apparently always demanded when he was ill.

Mitch had every intention of following them to the exact letter. Mrs Nylander was intense.

Willy shuffled into the kitchen, dragging what seemed to be every blanket in the apartment with him. Annoyingly, Willy managed to pull off sick and miserable way better than Mitch could pull off fully healthy and trying. His face was just _so sad_ , and Mitch wanted to take care of him, even though he knew full well how bitchy a sick Willy was.

“Whad’yre you doin’ in m’fuckin’ house?” Willy managed through a noseful of phlegm.

Mitch wrinkled his nose and set the pot of water and peas on the stove to boil. “Making soup.”

“In m’house?”

“Well, you’re not doing it, and Kappy is hiding, so. Yeah. Unless you want your mom to come out here and do whatever it is Swedish moms do when their kids are sick.”

Willy paled, and then flumped imperiously into a kitchen chair. “Fuckin’ fine.”

Mitch surmised that you did not want to be treated by a Swedish mom when you were sick.

“Your mom texted me a recipe for pea soup,” Mitch said, and frowned at his phone. “And then some kind of flatbread, which. I’m not making. I’ll make the soup.”

Willy mumbled something in Swedish.

“I can withdraw my my soup offer,” Mitch offered. “And you can go back to suffering alone, under your piles of duvets.”

Willy responded by flumping his head onto the table. He stayed there until Mitch set a bowl of pea soup in front of him.

Mitch served himself his own bowl of soup, and ate while Willy sniffled pathetically.

“Thanks,” Willy mumbled, when his bowl had been scraped clean.

Mitch passed a hand over Willy’s hair, and went to serve himself another bowl of soup.

 

  1. **Christmas Cookies (Patrick Marleau)**



_“We all eat, and it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly.” -Anna Thomas_

To be entirely fair, when Mitch showed up at Patty’s house it wasn’t just to get fed. The Marleaus just happened to have a lot of food, because Patty’s family was kind of big. Patty had four boys of his own—Landon, Brody, Jagger, and Caleb—so Mitch’s presence was more childcare reinforcement and crowd control than a true guest in the Marleau household.

Caleb, the littlest Marleau, was three and completely enamoured with Mitch. The older three followed their dad like ducklings, but Caleb clung to Mitch whenever Mitch visited.

“Each one of the boys had an idol on the Sharks,” Patty explained. “Jagger was in love with Marty’s beard—ah, Paul Martin, that is. I’m not surprised Caleb picked someone on the Leafs.”

Patty’s wife had taken the three older boys for haircuts, but Caleb’s hair was stubbornly short, so he had stayed behind with his dad. Mitch had just happened to drop by to pick up the deck of cards Patty had kept from their last road trip, and a team hoody he’d left in Patty’s room.

Caleb was attached to Mitch’s leg, his face firmly squished into Mitch’s thigh. He was standing on Mitch’s toes, too.

“Hi Mitchy,” Caleb mumbled, and peered up at Mitch. “Snacks?”

“It’s just about snack time,” Patty explained. “Hey, mind watching him for a moment while I grab your things? I think I found one of your hats, too.”

“I can handle snack time,” Mitch confirmed, and shuffled into the Marleau’s kitchen with Caleb as a thirty pound stowaway. He got Caleb up onto the counter, and tracked down whole wheat bread and peanut butter for toast soldiers. He was looking for raisins in one of the kids’ snack cupboards--okay, so he’d been here a time or two--when Patty returned with a canvas bag and Mitch’s stuff.

“Cookies?” Caleb asked. He was generally quiet, which Mitch hadn’t expected from the youngest boy in a hockey family, but maybe Caleb was just an introvert, or something. He was gnawing happily on the toast soldiers, anyways.

“We can make cookies,” Patty said, winking at Mitch and Caleb. “But we can’t let the other boys know. Just our secret.”

Caleb nodded solemnly, and let Patty tie an apron around his neck, tripled over so it wouldn’t get tangled in his feet. He didn’t fuss when Patty held him up to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.

“You don’t have to stay, Mitch,” Patty said. “The other boys will be back soon.”

Caleb just looked up at Mitch with big eyes, and Mitch was gone.

“I like cooking,” Mitch said. “Got an apron for me?”

Patty’s grin was a little scary, and Mitch’s suspicions were confirmed when a ruffly teal SHARK MOM apron was produced from the pantry.

“We have a tin of cookie dough in the fridge at almost all times this year,” Patty explained after setting the oven to preheat. “We can make a half-dozen cookies at a time, and the littles are over the moon, and no one eats too many carbs or sugar.”

Patty set a tupperware filled with chocolate chip cookie dough and a baking sheet in front of Caleb and Mitch. “You wanna scoop me out three cookie dough balls, big man?”

Caleb dug his hands straight into the dough.

“We can only count up to three,” Patty whispered, so Caleb couldn’t hear. “We’re working on it.”

“Mitch, Mitch, Mitch,” Caleb chanted. “You too?”

“Not your dad?”

“I see Dad every day,” Caleb announced. “You’re special.”

Mitch pretended not to notice Patty filming the whole interacting with a shit-eating grin on his face, but Mitch was firmly of the belief that you didn’t disappoint children. He washed his hands and scooped out his own ball of cookie dough.

They ended up with a tray of a dozen, Caleb counting to three, and then just repeating random letters of the alphabet for every remaining cookie dough ball.

Patty slid the tray into the oven, and then helped Caleb wash his hands. Mitch went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and returned Patty’s SHARK MOM apron with an eyeroll.

“Thanks for gathering my stuff,” Mitch said, and gave Caleb a hug. “See you at the game tonight, little man?”

“He’ll sleep through it,” Patty warned, but then drew Mitch into a hug of his own. “I’ll bring you a couple cookies, though, sous-chef.”

Mitch bid them goodbye and took his bag of stuff out to his car, considering what it would be like to have a twenty-year long career like Patty, and to have four little kids. Then he decided he was okay waiting a little while, especially if Patty would let him borrow moments like that.

 

  1. _7_ **. Breakfast for Dinner (Auston Matthews)**



_“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” -Harriet Van Horne_

Time with Auston felt unlike time with the rest of his teammates. They connected on a level as friends as well as hockey players. It wasn’t that Mitch didn’t like or didn’t get along with his other teammates, but sometimes it felt like they spent time together because of proximity rather than genuine enjoyment of each other’s company. Time with Auston never felt like that.

Or, well, it didn’t feel like that when Mitch was soundly kicking Auston’s ass in Mario Party. Like, he knew the game was pretty much rigged, but there was something deeply satisfying about winning all the minigames and gloating as he did so.

Mitch did a victory lap when he secured his fifth star, and then collapsed himself into Auston’s lap. “Feed me,” he said, making big eyes.

Auston snorted. “I can’t cook, so what do you expect me to do?”

Mitch sat up. “Really? Nothing?

“I can do breakfast foods,” Auston said, getting a stubborn look on his face. “Like eggs in a frame.”

“A what now?”

“Eggs in a frame. Toast with a hole in the middle and a fried egg in the middle.”

“Huh. No?”

Auston turned and pointed at Mitch. “You’re gonna have one.”

“You’re wooing me with an egg in a frame?” Mitch followed Auston into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter. “Woo me, chef.”

“You can fuck right off if you’re going to be a dick about it.”

“No, feed me! I’m _hungry_!”

“You can set the table for that,” Auston said, and banished Mitch to the table to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, Auston presented a plate with a flourish. Indeed, there was a slice of toast with a fried egg in the middle, along with sausage links and fried tomatoes. It was surprisingly delicious and unburnt.

Auston preened when Mitch said so.

“Aww, are your caveman instincts getting to you?” Mitch teased. “You’ve provided for me? Gonna go beat on some rocks?”

“I’ll show you caveman,” Auston grumbled, and swept Mitch up in a fireman’s carry. Mitch was laughing right up until he found himself on Auston’s bed with the life being kissed out of him.

 

**+1.** [ **Croque-Madame** ](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017346-croque-madame) **(Mitch Marner)**

_“I think careful cooking is love, don’t you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who’s close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.” -Julia Child_

They stayed in bed until Mitch’s stomach was grumbling enough they couldn’t ignore it any longer. Mitch shimmied into boxers while Auston hauled himself to the shower.

In Auston’s kitchen, Mitch rummaged through the fridge and found bread, cheese, ham, eggs.

Croque-Madames it was, then.

Whistling, he started preheating the pan and whisked together the beginnings of the sauce.  By the time Auston joined him, he’d assembled the sandwiches and was frying up the eggs.

“Grilled cheese?” Auston asked, hooking his chin over Mitch’s shoulder.

“Croque-Madame,” Mitch corrected. “Oh, shit. Have you never had one?”

“Uh, no?”

“It’s a Canadian thing, I guess. It’s a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top. It was what my mom always made on weekends when I was a kid.”

“Huh.” Auston backed off. “Your turn to go caveman?”

“You can fuck right off and I’ll eat both sandwiches myself,” Mitch threatened, and flipped the eggs on top of the sandwiches. “Lunch is served.”

“What do you drink with Croque-Madames? Beer?”

“I mean, I usually had a glass of milk, because I was like, four. But sure, you can have a beer if you want.”

Mitch took the plates over to the table and settled in, accepting a kiss from Auston. As far as mornings-after went, this was a pretty good one.


End file.
